


Devil's Advocate

by kyanve



Category: Final Fantasy IV
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Sibling Rivalry, button pushing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-15
Updated: 2014-09-15
Packaged: 2018-02-17 11:23:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2307866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly pre-game drabble-ish.  Kain has never gotten along well with Cecil's self-doubt problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Advocate

Cecil Harvey worried a great deal about what other people wanted and expected of him. Often he worried enough that it would make his decisions for him, and it never stopped being something that irritated Kain. 

When they’d been children, and he was young enough to’ve not quite learned to understand how much different people could have their thoughts and emotions work differently, it’d cemented him hating the other boy. He knew plenty about trying to win the approval of others, it was something he fought for himself, but his father had always punished him harshly if he tried to just say or do what he thought was wanted without thinking. It was false because it wasn’t the actual answer, and that was as bad as intentionally lying, he was told; better to not say anything at all than to lie. Cecil seeming to get rewarded for it rankled as unfair, and he hadn’t learned yet to see “Afraid of people being disappointed” instead of “Lying to get people to like him”, and when Cecil tried to find ways to appease his antagonism, it only ever made him more angry, thinking it was fake.

A couple years of age and one time seeing Cecil upset because he wasn't sure how to reconcile conflicting expectations did a great deal to solve that; it was almost just another normal evening where the three of them would end up together in a side room out of the way, but this time he'd walked in on the middle of Cecil falling apart that he’d be a failure because whatever he did, he'd be failing someone. Rosa had been trying to calm him down and fixed Kain with the glare promising tying his hair to something solid and locking him in a room somewhere if he so much as breathed wrong, but it was hard to find “intent to mislead” in between “But I’m going to upset someone” and “but I'm supposed to be able to do this” with apologizing to Kain for seeing him "being stupid". Kain slunk to the side of the room to sit quietly, out of the way, until Cecil was actually properly inhaling again. 

Cecil got better at covering it, but the careful neutral expression covering a reaction that you didn’t want to have was something Kain was very familiar with. He usually did it covering anger, Cecil covered doubt and worries, but if you didn’t know the two of them, the straight attention and blank calm looked about the same. 

Cecil going blank to evaluate how what he wanted and believed measured up to what people wanted and expected of him still irritated Kain, even if the reasoning got more complicated as they got older; at some point, he’d sorted out enough of where Cecil’s actual beliefs and impulses were to have respect for it…and to notice that the worst threat to Cecil’s ability to be a Good Person was someone, especially enough people treating something as expected and normal or someone important to him, expressing disapproval. Kain’s antagonism had evolved with it, from the mix of jealous spite and anger at what he’d seen as fake appeasement to competitive sparring mixed with lingering jealousy and frustration. Their fights weren’t nearly as violent or hostile as they’d once been, but they’d become a weird kind of habit, enough to create a weird reversal; they’d butt heads, and it was a part of the dance that Kain wouldn’t back down until Cecil fought back, so that rising to the conflict was its own backwards appeasement. 

For a while, Kain was not sure if Cecil’d put enough thought into it to realize what was going on; if it was a conscious and planned form of Cecil actually thinking “this is what Kain wants”, or just an adapted habit that was taken for granted as how things worked. The debate went until one day when they were on the outer parts of the castle grounds, on the way to a practice both of them were expected at, both maybe thirteen, and taking a shortcut - a shortcut that meant being in earshot of a couple of the younger guards hassling a servant girl.

Cecil had stopped, and Kain could see the wheels turning - offense at the two men that were blocking her from going onto her work, worry about if they’d stop at verbal harassment, the girl being exasperated and trying not to act afraid, a glance towards the direction they’d been heading where the captain expected them to be soon, that they’d probably be in a fight with some of their own castle guard if they stopped. 

Kain had no question what he should be doing there himself, and there was a tiny bit of irritated frustration that he knew it’d be a quickly made decision as soon as he moved; Cecil would take Kain’s signal and follow him in. He wondered if he just pretended he hadn’t heard and kept walking, if Cecil would sit on his own conscience to try to keep up, and something perverse spiked.

“It’s not our problem.” He wasn’t quite loud enough to be heard in the side tower-alley the whole scene was in. 

“What?” Cecil blinked at him, mouth dropping open and confused.

“It’s not our problem; this sort of thing happens all the time, there’s no reason to bother with it.” 

Cecil’s mouth worked, a little too much discipline to actually sputter. “What do you mean it’s not our problem, we’re supposed to be protecting people, not - walking by and leaving them!”

“And if I go on ahead and tell the captain you were picking fights with the guards?” Kain crossed his arms, pulling up to his few-inches-taller with a mocking head tilt. 

There was the shift from sputtering confusion, blue eyes narrowing and Cecil’s shoulders squaring. “Do what you want, I’m not going to walk away!” 

By that point the two guards had overheard, and been distracted some - not enough for the girl to manage to slip past them, but enough that the two of them were being watched and things had gone quiet. Cecil turned on one heel, trying to pull up to look as intimidating as a scrawny, half-trained thirteen year old could.

He was only distracted for a moment of confusion by Kain following on his heels, grinning. 

It did end in a fight. They did end up late. The girl vanished in the chaos, only to turn up a little later while they were getting dressed down, meekly wedging into the captain’s lecture as the witness to what they’d done; the captain had paused, expression pinched, and the lecture - previously treating it as an excuse - changed angle at least a little with an admission that they’d done the right thing by their duty even if they’d also messed up being on time for other responsibilities and been reckless. Cecil spent the entire practice and a bit after casting occasional confused glances at Kain, answering the long dilemma; it was habit, not something Cecil had ever put thought to, which somehow made Kain feel better about the whole thing. 

Much later that evening, Cecil spoke just as Kain was turning to head back to his own room. “…Why did you argue like that if you were going to do the same thing?” 

Kain considered not answering, which would definitely preserve Cecil not realizing and mean it was something he could use; then again, that would probably get him followed. He shrugged, looking back over his shoulder. “I wanted to see what you’d do.” 

He walked off, leaving it at that and leaving Cecil with even more of a confused and frustrated stare after him. 

Kain never stopped being frustrated when Cecil would fall into circles doubting his own judgment, even if he was managing to not show it too openly and keep moving.

_”You’d betray your king?”_

_”Any man who’d wish for this is no king of mine.”_

But he was glad to see that the old trick still worked, years later.


End file.
